Howdy.

Yes, I need to pay more attention to this journal. Taken as read.

Here’s a little sci-fi flash fiction action (say that ten times after a night on the cough syrup) to get me back into the swing.

Bandersnatch

“Chums, it is fast.”

We’d converted from orbit to air, taking our time in descent. The footage of the mammal running downhill to the wetlands replayed a dozen times.

“I don’t give a damn,” Majana said. “I’m eating it. If it’s the last chance I’m going to have—”

“Even if it’s the only one?”

“Especially if it is.”

Majana had been striding for twenty years, had seen half the great parks of the Earth in that time. The prospect of a return to the Zero Footprint policy hit him very hard.

“It’s not the only one,” I told Cumber. “Be sensible.”

“No more footfalls, Gary? They’re protecting something.”

We watched again; the long, slender shape as it slid under a nose of rock and then dug into the stone, propelling itself across the cliff shelf as if gravity was as alien to it on Earth as it was to us in space.

“So fucking fast!”

“We could easily use up half the fuel for the strides chasing it.”

“Not if we don’t all go after it,” I suggested.

Cumber threw his gloves at me. As gravity asserted itself, the sensation of them hitting my skin was kind of electric. I tossed them back, letting my limbs learn the balance of weight again after so long at home.

“Anyone who wants to eat has to hunt,”Majana said.

“If this is final footfall, they’ll be expecting hundreds of specimens, almost constant footage. We waste a day chasing that—there’ll be no avoiding the questions.”

Majana switched off the monitor and reached for my knee, spinning me around towards the helm.

“We don’t know it’s the last footfall,” he said.“If they don’t tell us directly, then we don’t change our routine. We’ll bag the same amount of meat as always; take the same pictures we usually do. And tonight, chums, we’ll eat the Bandersnatch.”

The mammal—which we’d nicknamed Bandersnatch on account of its speed—had been filmed in Britain, just off the coast of the Western European Reserve. Solitary, largely nocturnal, and lacking any distinctive markings to break up its dark brown silhouette, the consistent proportions of the individual specimens caught on film had nonetheless led some to speculate that it was the same animal in each case. Possibly the last—or first—of its kind. It resembled nothing so much as the wolves of legend; hairy, in a way that none of the other post-human species were.

And fast. Moving in microgravity, leaning on recoils and propulsion points, speeds akin to the Bandersnatch’s were not impossible. But on Earth—locked into a striding frame just so you could move, your back bent and field of vision obscured by the metal around you—none of us could imagine navigating that fast without crashing.

We set off after it as the sunlight turned to rust. Strides make a hell of a noise, so pack hunting is the only way. Ten of us hunted the Bandersnatch. We poach for corporates, though, so there’s enough bankroll for such a big crew. And what else is there to spend it on?

When those ancient humans decided to start Earth anew, exiling themselves upwards, could they ever have imagined how the need for meat would come to define their children for a thousand generations? How all the gold in the sky couldn’t buy enough flesh? If the rumors were true and we’d gone too far…

Majana was right. First, last, whatever: tonight we’d eat the Bandersnatch.

We eventually found it in the same wetlands we’d seen on film.

Not only fast, it was a ghost by night; it’s body cold despite its fur and dim to heat vision. It scaled the trees with ease, and was as quick in the water as it was on land. But it wasn’t really trying to hide. It howled at us constantly as we closed around it and we could track it by sound alone.

It could have outrun us, but didn’t. Maybe it didn’t think it needed to. It was bigger than any of us. The stride folds you a good deal, but it almost uniformly gives you superior bulk over the largest prey. Not so the Bandersnatch. As we began to dart in in pairs—cutting left and right, before returning to hold the line for the next pair—the Bandersnatch would meet one attacker with its jaws thrown wide, clamp down on the frame of the stride and simply toss it aside.

“You frumious bastard!”

Majana had come at it from the same side repeatedly, seeing how it favored its left and taking the lion’s share of the beatings from it. It only had one head, though, and every attack repelled simultaneously left its back open. When we came to skin it for the fire, the muscles on its flanks were mincemeat.

We ate reclining on our sides around the smoking body, the easiest way to accommodate gravity. It was tough, but tasted of boar’s blood and snakeskin and everything that was delicious about meat.

“So this is the last for—well, who knows?”

“Fools,” Majana said, tossing a bone into the fire. “They’ll end up eating each other before a single generation has passed.”

He reached inside the Bandersnatch’s carcass to pull out another rib, but it was proving stubborn. Even up on his elbow, the angle was awkward and he had to lean his whole weight onto the bone to try and break it, pulling his knees underneath him for purchase.

“Ha!” Cumber snorted. “Hunting humans in zero G, chum? How exactly would you manage tha—?”

Cumber’s words died at the sound of bone snapping. Majana stared for a moment at the meat in his hand, then down at his feet, where they stood amid the ashes of the fire.

He was standing. With ease.

It took seconds of shock for me to realize that, in my surprise, I’d stood up as well.

“How?” Majana whispered, when he at last remembered Cumber speaking to him. “Well first, you’d need to be fast.”

© 2013, Damien Kelly. All rights reserved.

We used to celebrate the Feast of Thankfulness over here too, but Cromwell put pay to all that. But it was violent, and crazed, so I’m kinda okay with it.

Still, in solidarity with our US brethren – or to spoil their whole day for them, depending on how you view stories featuring creepy little kids – Clarion have kindly allowed me to post up Thankless, my Thanksgiving story from Season of the Macabre, free and gratis for the next 24 hours or so.

 It’s not cruel or kind. It’s just food. You gotta start understanding that. It’s all food. Food for him, food for us, food for the worms. That’s how she turns, this ol’ world.

You can read it in the stories section, or jump straight to it from this link.

Share it with anyone you think appreciates the dark meat.

As well as giving Season of the Macabre a glowing review, the nice folks at UpComing4Me.com are giving a copy of the paperback away here.

Just send an e-mail with the subject line SEASON to info@upcoming4 .me

Also, a tweet or Facebook post related to the giveaway will each give you an additional entry –  send them an e-mail with a link to the tweet or Facebook entry.

The closing date for the competition is September 2nd, so get a goddamn move on!

]]> http://damosays.com/journal/giveaway-win-season-of-the-macabre-at-upcoming4me/feed/ 0 http://damosays.com/journal/mood-boarding-the-anthology-with-pinterest/ http://damosays.com/journal/mood-boarding-the-anthology-with-pinterest/#comments Wed, 18 Jul 2012 21:40:44 +0000 Damien http://damosays.com/journal/?p=691

So, yes, Pinterest! I’d not payed it a huge amount of attention, previously dismissing it as scrapbooking for the internet, but I think I’ve found its usefulness for me: mood boarding.

I’m quite a fan of the idea of a mood board going hand-in-hand with the making of notes when I’m writing, and Pinterest seems to have been specifically designed for this. Not only that, but as I develop the habit further, linking images from pages and research repositories that I want to use for stories will combine the two processes beautifully.

More immediately, though, I’m looking at how having a mood board for Season of the Macabre is a new and interesting way of presenting the whole range of motifs and imagery that arise in the book, visual excerpts, in which each story has the opportunity to shine. It’s like having dozens of covers with which to make a connection with the prospective reader.  What’s better, once people have read the book they can extend that visual summary by suggesting more images to me for the mood board, like an pictorial review.

I’m loving it, but it’s distracting me utterly from the new book today, so I need to stop now and let it grow more organically. But I am going to start a new board, privately at first, for the new book — currently going by the title, “The Spirit of a Thousand Days” — so I can establish a look and feel for the world I’m creating. It begins with one of the images from the Season of the Macabre board, because the novel was born of the story “Yule” which appears in the anthology. And it’s a doozy, easily deserving of a repeat appearance. It’s called “Wild Dog” and it’s by an artist called Corinne Reid, whose wonderful, witty and macabre works at corinnereid.com and on the Society 6 art site are well worth a look, especially if you love Japanese art and mythology.

I’ve just been reading Joe Hill’s twitter comments on reading critically; how he dissects the structures in other author’s texts for things he can make use of himself, creating a set of notes on each that distill that author’s Rules. He’s not—he’s quick to point out—looking to emulate style, but rather their skills.

So, here it is, the new cover for Season of the Macabre, as revealed by Clarion this morning.

I have no idea who the child model in the picture is, but I already feel so guilty about being party to putting her here that I want to buy her a pony.

It’s filtering around the various outlets now, and you can get your copy here.

Killer openings. That’s what’s killing us.

Structure is what differentiates plot from story, which seems like an obvious statement, but in reality a lot of writers imagine the two terms as being synonymous and their writing suffers for it.

In response, I’m suggesting people take a leaf out of the social sciences book of style: think of plot not as the story-as-it-happens, but as a very one-sided version of events, selected to substantiate your endgame. Plot-as-argument teaches rigorous and critical analysis of how sound your vehicle is, and generates original and interesting structure almost as a second thought.

Psychology and the Art of War

I’m a psychology lecturer, so obviously I’m biasing my own perspective, but that’s actually the point in these arenas of academia: psychology, sociology, political science, economics, etc. In social science writing, we ask our students to argue one side of a debate over another. You’ll say, surely every subject does the same? They do, but not to the exclusive extent to which social scientists do.

Where other disciplines will favour exploration and synthesis of ideas, we come fresh to a topic already fighting. We teach that selection is key to understanding; the conscious rejection of evidence that does not fit with your model of the world or its behaviour. We teach them that every topic needs to be reduced to a straight line, a logical progression of A to B, even when we know that the reality is infinitely more complex and chaotic. We don’t answer big questions, because doing so would lead us away from that straight line that can be much more easily drawn between two points at a smaller distance from one another. And even though we know that everything probably has a “bit of column A, bit of column B” at its core, we divide into warring camps of A and B and we make it our business to see that the other side loses. Shamefully.

It seems both destructive and obstructive—and many bemoan the limitations that come from being so single-mindedly unwilling to find accommodation, except under duress—but the need to be critical, to tear things down is often key in the study of areas where no solid material evidence for what you believe in can be seen. It’s all interpretations, probabilities, relationships where the causes aren’t known, but the connection is clear nonetheless. It only works if you reject the sense in which every human is the bastard love child of a snowflake and butterfly and reduce them to as many cookie-cutter commonalities as you can. That’s like fighting smoke into a jar, but we do it because we’re accomplished brawlers. In such a hazy world, the only solidity comes from iron-headed belief and the relentless confidence of one’s convictions.

And that’s how we do psychology, kids: the Art of War upon the very idea of the Individual.

Of course this is an extreme version of the truth, and does not reflect the actual cross-pollination and blind observation that also goes on, but when you are a student learning the subject from first principles, this is the version of events we present to you. While actual research papers might be a good deal less sure of themselves when it comes to the science they communicate, but that’s not the way we teach students to write.

Why?

Why they made you write those goddamned essays in the first place

There are a number of unique factors that apply to writing that is being assessed for understanding that don’t trouble the working academic who’s already paid their learning dues.

Foremost amongst them is the need to not just get across content but to impress understanding. Any parrot can repeat words, but they don’t understand them. So, our model is that if you really understand a topic, you know it well enough to chop bits out of it, rearrange it into a different order and still have it make sense. How you do that is by adding such connective words as are necessary to make that jumble mess still relate to each other in the way they did in the books your read them from.

Second is the need to show you think critically. Books seem expert, complete and sensible, right up until you read a different book that completely disagrees with the last. Chopping and selecting only parts of a theory means you look at them in isolation and value them internally to the wider ideas. Forcing yourself to tear something down—not apart; this isn’t exploratory surgery, it’s serial killing—teaches you the structures that lie behind a conjecture or argument. And that’s what the learning process is for; arming you with the tools to handle your own ideas later, rather than sanctifying the ideas prevalent now.

A third factor is the limitation of space. The practicalities of assessment—I can’t read a whole book by each student, and an exam can only last a finite number of hours—mean that all that you write has to be short. What a book or chapter will assert in many thousands of words, you have to do in two. Summary won’t hack that, eventually the language breaks down, so you need a filleted version of the story, not just a boiled down one.

These concerns that only plague student writings make structure the core skill for what they write. Anyone can reproduce the ideas; we give all the credit to those who structure them successfully.

And the fact is, we come to fiction with the same value system.

What’s killing your writing?

We’ve already said the ideas are all gone, it’s how you combine them now that matters. We stress the importance of developing a character and voice over a plain exposition of plot. We tell writers that they should open their stories at some point other than the beginning of the series of events to be related, open in medias res, open on the action.

That’ll give you a killer opening.

Thing is, even when such advice is anything more than vague—which it rarely is—it doesn’t resolve the subsequent debate between those who will add that you need to have a strong outline of events before you start to write, versus those who suggest the best way to have a convincing character voice and a logical series of events, is to loose the reins on that character and let them run free, following a course that seems sensible to them. Do you need to outline? Do you need to write by the seat of your pants enough that the characters can revise the plot authentically?

Well, everyone is a special and unique artist, you’ll need to work it out for yourself, but for fuck sakes get writing and don’t look up until you’re done.

You can always fix it up in the second draft anyway, right? Coz the first thing you write from all these various pieces of advice will be unmitigated shit. We all get that, right?

WTF?

“Here’s my store of advice, my tips on writing: in the first instance, they amount to shit.”

I know writing is a chaotic craft with unique and individual experiences and practices, but come-the-fuck-on?

So, my contribution is this: between the outlining of events in your story—which you’ve had plenty of advice on—and developing the perspective of the character or characters who will experience, interpret and articulate those events—which, again, you’ve read plenty about— is a middle layer of structure. Hard, tough, glittering structure.

It is made up of argument, and the objections it raises—specifically the order in which those objections arise—determine the order in which events from the outline eventually show up in the written story.

And the voice raising these objections has to be one that is at odds with the version of events in the outline, one with an agenda that doesn’t gel with those of the characters. A genuinely dissenting voice.

The voice of a killer.

The Self-Sufficient Introduction and the Looking Glass Conclusion

Back to the Social Sciences, and a little on how I teach writing to academics.

To help struggling students ensure their university essays have logical structure, I teach them to open their essays with what I have dubbed the Self-Sufficient Introduction.

I get them to write it after they’ve written the substantive body of the essay, not before, and it has two guiding principles. Firstly it takes the main point from each paragraph of the essay body and makes a single sentence of it, and those sentences accrue in the order that the paragraphs they are drawn from come in the essay—obviously. That done, the second thing is to take the last sentence and put it first. That first sentence in the Self-sufficient Introduction is then the final conclusion that the student came to on the question they were set. In essence, it is the answer in one line that they have previously taken a whole essay to say. Very quickly, they find themselves reordering that Self-Sufficient Introduction such that the sentences that follow that conclusive opener lead back from it in such a way as to make sense.

The Self-Sufficient Introduction does a few things for you: it allows the reader to get the sense of your whole argument in a short burst, signposting what is to come, so you are less likely to lose them along the way and they are more likely to agree with you; it puts the answer first, seeding the reader’s mind that it is implicitly correct from the outset, transmuting an assertion into a base principle; and it gives the writer a tool to check that what seemed a logical order when they were knee deep in loads of prose is still logical when stripped to its bones.

When they’re happy with all this I get them to write that same introduction out in reverse order, and call it the Looking Glass Conclusion, which they stick at the end. The conclusion is a convention of academic writing and this one neatly reflects the argument being made at the outset by the Self-Sufficient Introduction, bookending the essay and delivering the final psychological blow to any remaining doubts the reader has about that argument.

But what’s ironic about this convention, this afterthought, is that it is actually a map of the thinking the student started out with. The Looking Glass Conclusion is identical to their primary mental outline for the essay itself.

So, here’s your assignment

You, with your Outline, have what I would call a Looking Glass Conclusion. It flows from first principles unto the endpoint in a way that has narrative logic. But it is a conclusion—something locked down, having a sense of something finished about it, which an Outline rarely is. So turn it back into a Self-Sufficient Introduction.

Reverse the Outline.

Put the end of the story back up first, and see the outline of events that lead up to it flowing backwards to the start instead of the other way round. Every previous “therefore” becomes a “because.” Your passive notion of logic becomes an active wording of argument, seeking to persuade rather that simply assert.

Now kill it. Kill the Outline before your write the book.

Dissent every point; rope in a friend to fight you on it if that helps, but—and this is the most important thing of all—don’t let the order of events determine how you voice that dissent.

When you come to tear the story down, start with the biggest problem first. What’s great is if that biggest problem is with the first part of this story Introduction we’ve created: the end. Contest that the end sucks, if you can. If not, just go for the next biggest problem. Then the next, and so on. Debate the problems.

Resolve them, naturally.

And then use the order in which problems were identified as the order for the story you begin to write.

(Or the questions, if that’s how you prefer to think of them—you may be feeling a little sensitive to certain terms at this point.)

This is the hard part, but the key to an original and engaging structure and, hopefully, a more powerful story as a consequence. You tell the story in the order of those elements that were identified as being the most important, most crucial elements by that dissenting voice. If that voice was that of a friend or friends, well you’ve usefully tapped a reading population to see what they really want to know about and now you’re going to convince them you were right. But even more powerfully, if it was you who was providing that dissenting voice, you’ve tapped your own themes in a way that the prescribed outline never did, and you know what you really want to write about. Waste no narrative time getting to those things.

Yes, making that odd order work will tax you more than the straightforward outline did, and you may not be opening on that crowd-pleasing, teasing action sequence the consensus suggests you do—tough. You’ll be writing from a place of genuine understanding, not just throwing words down and hoping some shape can be forced together later. And you’ll be writing a book that you know you are interested in from the first word of the first scene, which should have been the point all along.

Such a book exposes its jugular to the teeth of criticism right away, and lives or dies by its strongest beliefs. That’s what a killer opening should be.

The one that might very well kill you.

In addition to welcoming me onto her site, Kim at The Caffeinated Diva has also give Season of the Macabre its first 5 star review.

I am a sucker for good macabre fiction, and this book delivered that.  All of the stories had a holiday theme, but definitely not of the “fluffy, happy bunny” variety!  One part horror, one part creepy, and one part disturbing made for a fantastic set of short stories.  I don’t know that I could even pick one as my favorite because they were all equally creepily, wonderfully, disturbingly great stories.

What I liked is that the author stepped to the left of center with some of these stories.  They had twists and turns that took the story places that isn’t usual, which made them even more exciting to read.  I also really enjoyed his matter-of-fact style that created some characters that were completely unapologetic for their actions.  That just added to the “creepy and disturbing” factor!  Fantastic read!

 Thank you, Kim.

Kim at The Caffeinated Diva features a guest post from yours truly today on what makes for good horror writing: losing.

To write horror, you have to find your own mechanism of fear. You have to know how you want to be hurt, but also find a way to give everyone the same opportunity to be hurt in their own way. The very best (worst?) horror fills unwritten gaps.

Head over and read it now.

So, it is time for another psychological evaluation, and we’re staying with new female voices for the time being; partly because they’re still underrepresented and insufficiently valued in genre fiction, but also partly because I just spent a protracted period of time surrounded by Disneyland Princesses and a perpetually squealing two-year-old, and I feel the need to tear into a feminine psyche with a screwdriver and a bag of weasels.

Hear that? It’s my feminism, popping like a Mickey-Mouse-shaped helium balloon under a blowtorch.

Today’s unwilling victim participant is YA book reviewer and blogger turned novelist, Sara Zaske, author of The First.

Case notes:

Fantasy Author Sara Zaske’s debut novel, The First, arises out of a lifetime of constant upheaval.

Zaske has city-hopped across the world, roaming from Oakland—the setting for The First—to a variety of exotic locales, before finally settling in Berlin, where she now lives and works. Her list of occupations is similarly varied: bookseller, advertising hack, English teacher, newspaper reporter, communications director, and an editor.

“Do you sense a theme?” she asks.

Yes: a need for deep psychological evaluation. To the couch!

History:

Sara, your YA book, The First, features a girl who can root herself to the earth—projecting much?

A: Yes, I’ve always wanted to be a tree.

Seriously, The First did come out of some deep-seated homesickness. It’s not just that I’m an American expat living in Germany—of all the places I’ve lived, I miss Oakland, California the most, so I decided to go back and visit by setting my book there. Luckily, it also fit well with my tree fixation.

[Trees? California? Oh crap—is she a hippie? Oh, hell no!  I can't be dealing with no Californian hippie; there's no making sense of a hippie. They're just lollipops in skin suits. There's no psychosis—

I neeeeed my psychosis!

Wait. Calm down, Damien, you're possibly jumping to conclusions. The homesickness story is entirely possible, so let's keep an open mind...]

Family:

What did your parents want you to be when you grew up?

A: My mother said I should be a zoologist since I loved animals. My dad pointed out that I was a good writer. Maybe it would have been better to listen to Mom. I hear zoologists are paid better.

[...nope, all hope is lost. Loves animals? She's a hippie. How the hell did I miss the signs? What the hell do I do now? These people are expecting my expert opinion on the thinking processes of a... a cabbage!]

Introversion:

If I find you “lost in thought”, where has your mind gone to?

A: Usually into a possible story scene. I do this a lot because I have limited time to actually sit down and write. And the glowing blank eye of my computer sometimes intimidates me, so I like to be ready when I turn it on.

[My computer intimidates me? Oh please let this be a paranoid delusion coming on, I can work with a paranoid delusion. Tiny spark of hope returning...]

Extroversion:

You host a popular blog, YA Fantastic Review Blog. Has writing about what you read helped inform what you write?

A: Sure. It humbles me. And it helps me figure out what does and doesn’t work in a story and why.

[...and we're back to reasonable. Perfectly reasonable. A perfectly reasonable hippie. Bugger.]

Phobias:

What kinds of things frighten you?

A: I used to be frightened by the idea of crippling pain or becoming horribly maimed or diseased, but then I had kids. Now I’m more afraid about those things happening to them, and even worse, that somehow I could have done something to prevent it and failed.

[OH COME ON! Mother Theresa didn't come across as this bloody selfless!]

Rorschach test:

Tell me everything you see in this image.

 A: Two wolves who share the same heart pointing their noses toward an Aztec temple (either that or some hands high-fiving). Not to self-analyze, but sounds like a terrible plot for a YA fantasy novel.

 [Oh. My. God. She's now doing her own analysis. She's actually making me redundant to my own process. Hippies. God. Damned. Hippies!]

Emotional intelligence:

What’s your favorite expletive?

A: Frick. Did I mention I have young kids at home? I used to like the original version because it was so frickin’ versatile—at one and the same time a terrible insult and something fun to do. But obviously it’s not appropriate to use around the under seven crowd.

[Yeah, no, of course you don't swear, of course, no, why would you? I don't frickin' believe this...]

The unconscious:

What do you dream about?

A: Strange mixtures of stuff. In one recent one, I was making American pizza (the real kind with the good crust that you cannot find anywhere in Europe) and serving it to several dragons. In my favorite dreams, I’m some kind of ocean creature who rides whales.

[Whales. I wondered when they were going to show up.]

Hopes for the Future:

What’s next on your writing calendar? Another novel?

A: I’m revising the book I wrote before The First, so The First is actually the second and the real first novel is about a girl with an uncontrollable fire talent who gets carried off by a dragon. (Got that?) After that revision, I’ve been thinking a lot about a scary novel where my main character can see everyone else’s personal demons, but perhaps I’ve just been hanging around with too many horror writers lately.

[Is she...is she trying to turn the analysis back on me? Horror writer...seeing other people's personal demons...holy shit.

It's a ruse. That hippie crap—it's all a ruse!]

Psychosis:

And finally, given free rein to strangle anyone, what kind of person would you rid the world of?

A: Evil dictators, murderers, rapists, torturers, slave traffickers… wait I only get one? I feel a vigilante streak coming on. Really, I don’t think I could actually strangle anyone, no matter how evil. Does it have to be with my bare hands or can I use a rope, perhaps some piano wire? Wait aren’t these the kind of questions horror writers contemplate?

[I'm Bridget Fonda! That's what this is, it's Single White Female and I'm Bridget Fonda and she's Jennifer Jason Leigh. Ha!

I knew all that Stepford Wife/Earth Mother homeliness was a fake out—Can I use a rope? Yeah, baby, there's the crazy I've been looking for.  The kind that takes your life with a piano wire.

Wait—how many times did she say she had to suddenly move country?

Oh frick.]

Evaluation:

I can’t lie; I’m not the target for The First. I’ve enjoyed lots of works designated as Young Adult fiction, and my final year of literature studies was focussed entirely on children’s literature. There’s a difficulty in identifying the elements that lend a children’s work (which includes YA fiction) that transcendent, crossover appeal to adult readers, but this book doesn’t trouble that level of exploration. Written in a very direct, authentically youthful style, and at a skipping pace, this story wears its juvenile focus on its sleeve, and it hasn’t the additional layers that would give it the kind of crossover appeal that the likes of His Dark Materials, for example, enjoys.

But that’s not to say that this is a formulaic children’s book. In the debates over what is and is not a work for younger readers, the only consistent definition is one where the writer is striving to say something about childhood. Sara Zaske definitely has something to say about childhood, and she’s doing it in a faithful voice and in an honest way that takes her novel away from a lot of the tropes of the genre.

Cassie, her protagonist, defies cliché at every turn. She’s not the magical character, but neither is she the scrappy outsider, fighting up from nothing. She’s the side-kick, in every single way—the character who, in any other book, would be a foil for comic asides and set pieces, and it is very novel to see that middle-distance character given narrative focus. She is de-centred from the supernatural story, but she’s no reflective, passive observer of events; it’s her story, and the magical elements are in service to her story. But even this could be clichéd if the magical events were befalling this very ordinary girl. Crucially, they’re not; what brings Cassie into the plot are her own selfish agendas and I found that really engaging and accessible. Cassie is a uniquely believable teenage girl, and her presence in this otherwise very ethereal world gives it a powerful sense of the recognisable. Add to this a dusty, urban contrast to her otherworld, and there’s a strain of Charlaine Harris’ Bon Temps in Zaske’s Oakland that really pushes the modern aesthetic onto what is—in its bones—a very traditional fairytale.

Zaske is, herself, revised and de-centred. All that moving about, becoming a mother, while having that profound desire to look backwards—she is in the middle distance, and can empathise with her main character completely. If she always writes from this authentic place, I’d be quick to pass her books onto my own daughter.

When she’s old enough. And presuming she can handle hippies.

The First is currently available for Kindle from Amazon.

You can find details of Sara’s books and her YA reviews at sarazaske.wordpress.com

Read the previous Psych Evaluation with Ania Ahlborn.